You might think an ‘Occupy Movement’ would find fertile ground in a land as brutally unequal as South Africa, not to mention an economy virtually hostage to monopoly capital. Yet Occupy is primarily driven by an educated, salaried middle class, which has now found itself rapidly sinking into either economic ruin or, horror of horrors, […]
protest
Posted inGeneral, News/Politics
The significance of recent protests for democracy
There is a certain historical justice about TIME magazine’s choice of its 2011 Person of the Year: The Protestor, with the sub-script, “From the Arab Spring to Athens, from Occupy Wall Street to Moscow”. What managing editor Richard Stengel writes on page 7 of this issue (December 26, 2011/January 2, 2012), resonates with Albert Camus’s […]
Posted inGeneral
Alain Badiou, the “event”, and political subjectivity
Alain Badiou, whose work is, as far as I can tell, not widely known in the English-speaking world – where Peter Hallward has done a lot to compensate for this lack – is a contemporary thinker who has done much to refine the philosophical understanding of the human subject. As Hallward observes (in the Translator’s […]
Posted inNews/Politics
March like an Egyptian: Let’s create a culture of protest
By Mia Swart By appealing his suspension from the ANC, Julius Malema showed that he will not lie down. Like a phoenix he is bound to rise again. Malema’s reckless public statements have often done nothing but infuriate. But he has occasionally made constructive statements. A few years ago, he said that white South Africans […]
Posted inEquality, Gender violence, News/Politics
Metro police would rather police women’s sexuality than men’s violence
According to their Facebook Page “V-Girls is a global movement of girl activists inspired by I Am an Emotional Creature” — Eve Ensler’s latest collection of monologues for and about girls. The aim of the book, and of the movement is to inspire girls to take agency over their lives, and to encourage them to […]